


The Shadows Will Fall Behind

by ficlicious



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Cinematic Universe, Man of Steel (2013)
Genre: Alfred Is Meddlesome, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Spoilers, Everyone Needs A Goddamn Hug, F/F, F/M, Female Clark, Mental Health Issues, Minor Memory Loss, Multi, Other Additional Pairings to be Added, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rule 63 Clark Kent, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-02
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-12 15:03:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7939081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ficlicious/pseuds/ficlicious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Turn your face to the sun, and the shadows will fall behind you.</i>
</p><p>She's still not sure how she ended up at the Batman's house, or why. All she knows is that it's a safe haven where she can recuperate from her ordeal, regain the powers she burned out, and maybe recover her badly-shaken balance.  </p><p>And it sounds crazy, but there's something comforting about Gotham, even with a new fear drug loose on the streets and rumors of the Scarecrow coming out of retirement. There's something peaceful in the shadows and the night, the quiet and the darkness. There's something reassuring about knowing the Dark Knight is there, watchful and vigilant.</p><p>She can't hide forever, she knows. The longer she waits, the more difficult it will be. The world has claimed her now, a fallen champion and their native child, but she knows too well how easily that can turn back to hatred and venom, assassination attempts and a body count of the innocent around her. </p><p>She flourishes in the sunshine, grows strong and joyous, but she doesn't want the sunshine anymore. Good thing the sun rarely shines in Gotham. </p><p>Coming back to life is way harder than staying dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Medie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/gifts).



> Yes. A BvS Rule 63 Superbat post-canon fic. 
> 
> Because Medie.

 

Clawing her way out of her own grave is an experience Clark never, ever wants to repeat. It leaves her shaky and reeling on her hands and knees, feeling weak as a newborn calf. The sunlight is restorative, and she tips her face to the sky with a desperate sort of gratitude, drinking in the warmth and the light until she’s coughed the last of the dirt out of her lungs and feels strong enough to stand without immediately falling over again. 

More out of habit than hope she can clean herself up, she dusts her hands across her backside, shaking dirt off with every flick. The sun, bright and just past its zenith, is doing wonders to clear her foggy head and restore confidence to her still-unsteady limbs, but she can’t process how she had ended up in a coffin in the ground. 

_ They must have thought I was dead,  _ she thinks, glancing down. Her Sunday best dress, her  _ only  _ best dress if she’s being honest, sleek and black and tasteful, a gift from Lois on their six-month anniversary (“because I’m tired of that sad sundress thing you wear to official functions, Smallville,” a memory whispers inside her head, “no matter how hot you look in it”), with sensible flats the big city never could transmute into a love of stiletto heels. It must have been serious if they’d buried her. 

She chews on her lip, absently shaking dirt and grass out of her hair, and stares at her grave. Her mother must have given up hope, but she wouldn’t have right away. Not Martha Kent, the constant, steady bright light of hope and faith in Clark’s life. She wonders how long she’d lain out in the sunlight, her mother standing over her, Lois next to her. It breaks her heart to imagine the devastated looks on their faces, to picture them turning away in despair when the sunlight failed to wake her. How many days had they waited? How long had they lived in the place where hope turns to ash, slowly and painfully? 

She frowns, turned away from the churned-up earth and tilting her face up to the sun again. The last thing she remembers is Bruce, the Batman, fist around her throat and pressing her into the kryptonite. She remembers choking out her mother’s name, a desperate gambit that the tenuous thread of their mothers sharing a name would be enough to stall him, make him think, give him pause, and then the world going dark and muffled.

If she ended up in the ground, though, Bruce must have beaten her fairly badly. 

But that doesn’t seem right. Clark brushes more dirt off her shoulders, trying not to wrinkle her nose in distaste at how grimy she feels. Bruce may have nearly killed her — she seems to remember it happening that way — and it may be the clearest, most recent memory, but the more she pokes around for answers from her thoughts, the more sure she is that other things happened past her fight with Bruce. 

She needs to go home, let her mother know she is still alive. She needs to talk to Lois, to Mom, to Bruce, she needs to figure out what happened, because there are holes in her memory, so faint she might not suspect they were there at all if she isn’t thinking about it. If nothing else, she thinks wryly, she needs a shower and a change of clothing. She hopes she can save the dress after a thorough run-through the heavy-soil wash cycle. She likes this dress, darn it. 

She gathers herself and wills herself upward, and has a very bad moment filled with sharp and sudden panic when her feet stay firmly rooted to the ground. She tries again and again, reaching for the place where flight resided, waiting for her to tap into its potential and rise into the blue. 

Her feet stay on the ground. 

Briefly, she has a vivid flash of the green gas, the aerosolized kryptonite Bruce had dosed her with, and shudders violently, then forces herself to calm down, to breathe normally, to relax the unhappy knots of her shoulders. There’s an answer for this. There’s always an answer for this. Residual kryptonite poisoning, maybe. It would take time for her body to purge it, no doubt. She’d just have to deal with it until it did. 

Besides, if she doesn’t think about it too hard, she’d forgotten how much  _ fun _ jumping is. Her first leap is tentative, testing the strength of her legs, the control of her direction and velocity, and only carries her fifty or so feet. More properly a hop than a true jump. But she launches without issue, everything feels and behaves as it should.

_ Flight was the last thing I learned,  _ she thinks as she leaps into the sky at full strength, hits the top of her parabola and smiles at the well-familiar rush of excitement and adrenaline as the ground comes up fast and big beneath her. It was a random thought, but as she thinks about it some more, the more sense it makes. 

She hasn’t tested her heat vision or her x-ray vision yet, nor her speed, and her senses  _ feel  _ like they’re at the hard-earned slightly-above-human levels she fought like a bear to learn to maintain, but it makes sense. Even if nothing else works, her powers had come gradually, not all at once, developed over time as her body matured and adapted to the yellow sunshine all around her. The earliest things to develop had been her strength and her durability, her healing and her stamina. 

_ They’re still there,  _ she reassures herself as she comes down in a crater and an explosion of dust and ash in Mrs. Peachtree’s nutrient-burned back acre. Unease and panic well at the scent of char and smoke, a dark shape swimming out of the foggy spots in her memory, but she's already pushed off the ground again, and it subsides just as quickly.   _ Everything else will come back too. I just need to wait.  _

_ \---- _

Her mother isn't home when Clark lands beside the path leading up to the front door; the truck is gone, the house flashing cold and silent to Clark's flickering senses. Unease returns to burrow and wiggle through her thoughts as she moves through the house, plagued by the feeling that something is  _ off,  _ something is  _ not-right _ , but she shoves it aside as best she can to focus on the thought of getting clean. 

The shower is the best one she's ever had, and she cranks the single lever-style dial all the way to as hot as the boiler in the basement is capable of producing. An alarming amount of mud and dirt washes away, and it's a long few minutes before the swirl of suds and water around her feet is anything approaching clear. 

She feels human again by the time she has her wet hair brushed back, slicked tight against her skull and twisted up into her favorite antique claw-comb, rescued from the grave-dirt with judicial application of the nail brush over the sink. Her appetite woke up at some point, and drives her to pad barefoot to the kitchen, almost before she has her jeans buttoned.

She freezes, hand holding the door open, and stares into the practically-bare fridge. She can’t remember the last time she’s seen the fridge this empty. Even after her father died and she moved in with Lois, her mother had kept it stocked with leftovers and cold cuts, feeding the local kids who came to help with the planting in the spring and the harvesting in the fall. There should be pans of brownies, leftover turkey and ham, vegetables from the garden, jars of preserves, heads of lettuce, hard round red onions and stalks of green onions. Milk and cheese from the Yin’s dairy down the road, traded for Mom’s ribbon-winning heirloom tomatoes. Fish, fresh-caught from the stream at the edge of the property. 

Clark reaches in a shaky hand and pulls out the two wrinkly apples from the top shelf, and the last slivers of cheese wrapped haphazardly in plastic, and quietly shuts the door again.

The cupboards are just as empty, but Clark rummages a box of saltines from behind the burlap sack of oatmeal. Crackers and cheese and apples doesn’t make much of a meal, but it at least puts a small dent in the ravenous hunger. 

It doesn’t, however, do a single thing for the disquiet building to a screaming roar in her head. 

She goes back to her room after cleaning up the garbage of her meagre meal and slides into her desk chair. Her fingers leave streaks through the thick dust as she lifts the laptop’s cover, and her frown deepens. It takes forever for it to boot up, being ancient, but when it does, Clark’s world comes to a screeching, burnt-rubber scented halt. 

_ October 8th, 2016  _ reads the date in the bottom right-hand corner. 

“June,” she whispers, staring at the screen in utter disbelief. “It’s June, isn’t it?”

She shoves herself away from the desk, paces the floor with a sudden anxious energy, running her hands restlessly over her still-wet hair. She pauses by the window, dawning horror creeping up her spine as she measures the growth of the wheat in the field, the color of the leaves in the orchard, the position of the sun in the sky. 

And then, the other details, the things she should have noticed but didn’t, because she was too preoccupied with the loss of her flight, too creeped out by climbing out of a grave in Smallville’s cemetery. The tractor that hasn’t moved since the last time she saw it in May. The overgrowth of the fields, the weeds and the birds and the rabbits running wild through the usually-groomed plots. The chicken coop, suspiciously devoid of chickens. 

The dust in her room. 

The fridge and cupboards bare. 

The … not quite untidy, but  _ different _ state of the house, dishes still in the dishwasher, laundry piled by the washer. Less care taken, less pride given. 

Clark’s breath hitches a little faster, her hand pressing shakily against the window. Her father, when he’d been alive, had always joked that her mother would scrub the floors straight up until Doomsday, because it—

_ Doomsday. _

It sears back all at once, the torrent of missing data and memories.  Luthor shoving Lois off the Lexcorp building. The truce with the Batman. The abomination. The nuke detonating on top of her. Floating, alone and dying in space. The spear, the kryptonite. 

She’s screaming, she’s howling, squeezing her eyes closed and clutching her head between both hands like she’s trying to shut out the noise of the world. Glass shatters, stings her face for a moment, and then there’s nothing but a constant storm of howling cold against her skin, hearing fluctuating between superhuman and torturously sensitive. Sounds slur together, a long cacophony of noise that drills right to the center of her head, where the creature towers over her with cold, dead, empty eyes and a fist that crackles like the sun.

The next thing she knows, glass is flying all around her again as she falls out of the sky, through a skylight, and crashes into a suit of armor in the library beneath it. Her head swirls and her vision swims, staring up in confusion at an older gentleman in a dress shirt and vest, standing over her with one hand tucked behind his back and a fireplace poker resting on his shoulder. 

“Ms. Kent, I presume?” His accent is British, clipped, steady. She blinks at the familiar tones, and it takes her a second to place the voice she’d heard dancing under the Batman’s, likely through an earpiece or other communications device. If this is Batman’s… she has no idea. Partner? Father? Manservant? If this is Batman’s associate, he should be well-aware of who she is and what she does, but he still leans forward and offers her a hand up like she might require the assistance. 

It also occurs to her that, for someone who also probably thought she was dead, he hasn’t batted much of an eyelash at seeing her crash into his home. Her wariness ratchets up a notch. 

“Yes,” she says, after clearing her throat, and takes his hand to get back onto her feet. “Forgive me. I… don’t really know…” She trails off, tilting her head back to eye the skylight well overhead, and feels a flush of embarrassment heat her cheeks. “I’ll fix that,” she says lamely. 

“It’s no matter, miss,” the man says, and moves back to the fireplace to return the poker to its holder on the stones. “My name is Alfred. Welcome to Wayne Manor. Master Wayne has unfortunately been called away from the premises, but should return when he is soonest able.” 

“I... “ Once again trailing off, she shakes her head slowly. “I don’t remember coming to Gotham,” she says softly, smiles wryly, confusedly, bewildered and baffled. “I was in Smallville, and…” She shrugs, helplessly waving a hand.

Alfred watches her steadily, expression polite and neutral, but Clark thinks that his eyes have softened, gone a little warmer. “Come with me, miss,” he says kindly, sweeps his hand towards the door. “I find that, when one is faced with an abrupt shift of perception, a good, hot meal can make it seem just a little less frightening. I have a lasagna in the oven. Would you like some?”

As divine as the shower had been earlier, Clark thinks that a real meal would probably top that at this point. Her whole body  _ aches  _ in a way it rarely has, in the same way it ached the months she’d spent in the Arctic Circle, deprived of sunlight and working her hardest to understand her place on the earth.

“I would appreciate it, thank you,” she murmurs, remembering her manners at last, and lets Alfred lead her from the library. As she crunches through the glass shards, she has the grace to look down at her bare feet and flame with embarrassment again. “And I really will clean that up. And fix the window.”

“Never mind that, miss,” Alfred says gently, guiding her down the long, echoing hallway with a hand hovering at the small of her back but never quite touching. “It’s only a window, and I wasn’t terribly fond of polishing that armor anyway. Let’s get you something to eat, and I’ll inform Master Bruce that you’ve come calling.”

**oOoOoOo**

Twenty years he’s been active as the Bat of Gotham, and Bruce has never seen the world so quickly go to shit as it has in the four months since the death of Superwoman. 

Oh, the criminals have always existed, and he knows that. There have always been shadows, always demons lurking in the byways of the world. Always a gun wrapped in pearls waiting down a dark alleyway to orphan another innocent child. There aren’t really any new players hitting the streets, no more so than usual, anyway. Certainly no one on the level of the Joker, Two-Face, or the Scarecrow. Wannabes and kids with too much ego and not enough experience. 

Same shit, different day.

But something changed the moment Kal-El hit the dirt and didn’t get up. As controversial and divisive as she was, as loathed and feared and adored and emulated, she had been a light burning fiercely. A cruel-eyed demon to some. A benevolent angel to others. But a light to warm the world, or char it to dust. 

And then the light was gone, and now the world is a little colder, a little greyer, a little grimmer. Something fundamentally important not  _ broken _ , but damaged. Maybe beyond repair. And the scumbags, low-level flunkies and thugs in Armani, they all know how to capitalize on despair and hopelessness to flourish and profit, like cockroaches. 

No one’s emerging who can challenge him on the same level as his rogues’ gallery, but for every swaggering pimp or slick-eyed drug dealer he takes off the streets, eight more take their places. 

He’s tired. So very goddamn tired. 

But there’s no one else. 

_ Not yet, anyway,  _ he amends, carefully eyeing the drug deal going down beneath him. It’s strange to think that there are others now, Diana and the speedy kid, the Atlantean and the cyborg. He hasn’t gathered any of them to him yet, except Diana who comes and goes as she pleases, befitting a princess of Themyscira, but it’s…  _ comforting,  _ just a little, to know they’re out there. 

Bruce doesn’t know what to do with comfort, so he ignores it as best he can.

Abruptly, he straightens, long experience alerting him to the most appropriate time to step off the building, flare his cape, and descend like the Old Testament wrath of God on the dealer daring to peddle on his streets. 

It only takes two minutes to scare the junkie off, to deal with and truss the pusher to a convenient pipe. He stoops long enough to rifle through the man's pockets, pulling baggies of dope out and dropping them at his feet. Keys, money, cigarettes and a silver Zippo. Switchblade. Street scum survival kit. Nothing out of the ordinary. 

But he stops when paper and plastic crinkle under his fingers, straightens to bring it into the light. A baggie of small white squares, stamped with a smiling pumpkin head. His eyes narrow. “Scarecrow,” he growls. 

Just for a moment, he wavers on the edge of deciding to drop this baggie too. Just for a moment, he wants to leave it for the police to deal with. Just for a moment…

But the police cannot deal with the likes of Jonathan Crane. They'd try, but Crane is a unique class of psychopath and Gordon's people would be completely overwhelmed before they knew what was happening. 

He raises his grapple gun and fires, still staring at the baggie, and lets the zip line pull him up to the safety of the shadows as two cruisers round the corner and screech to a halt at the mouth of the alley. He crouches on the ledge, a pool of darkness in a pool of darkness, and tucks the baggie into his belt.  

Jonathan Crane. 

His thoughts travel down dark paths as he considers his next course of action, idly watching the police below handcuff the dealer and begin inventorying the drugs and the knife. So far as he knows, Crane is still safely locked up in his padded room in Arkham, where he’s been rotting for the last six years. But if there’s one thing Bruce has learned over the never-ending years of stalking the villainous in Gotham City, it’s that being locked up in Arkham doesn’t mean a goddamn thing unless it's in one’s best interest to be locked up.

He should return to the Cave, access his files, start running search algorithms for crimes and drug-related offenses that fit the Scarecrow’s MO. He should also pay a visit to Arkham, and check for himself that everyone who _should_ be there is nice and cozy in their cells. He should connect with his networks, run down any leads he can uncover. Use the Cave servers and analysis suites for a complete chemical breakdown of the drug. 

Then again, the longer he leaves his direct investigation idling, the more people could possibly be hurt by this new cocktail if it starts hitting the street in large quantities. Even without knowing what witch’s brew of chemicals and compounds went into its making, its physiological and psychological effects on a body, or how long it lasts, if it came from the Scarecrow, there’s nothing positive about it.

But if he’s being honest, he just wants to go home, shower, eat, and sleep for a week. He’s been out prowling the rooftops for hours now, and he will stay out for hours yet if needed, but he’s not as young as he used to be. He’s not decrepit by a long shot. He's in the best condition of his _life..._  but that doesn’t stop the slow march of time from wearing away at his stamina and flexibility. He just  _ aches _ in a way he rarely has, too many nights spent with untreated injuries taking their toll on a body that doesn’t heal  _ quite _ as fast as it did twenty years ago.

His earpiece chirps while he’s still trying to decide. “Greetings, sir,” Alfred says, cool and even, business as usual. Reassuringly in control. “I’m calling to inquire how much longer you expect you might be out tonight.”

Bruce resists the urge to sigh. He wouldn’t trade Alfred for anything in the world, and he loves the old man more dearly than anything else, but occasionally he develops the notion that Bruce needs a family in order to feel settled. Bruce disagrees, but suffers through every passive-aggressive comment, thinking to himself that, after all the crap he’s put Alfred through over the years, Alfred’s earned that right. “I’m not sure,” he says. “I turned up a cache of drugs with Scarecrow’s stamp on them. I want to flush out some of Scarecrow’s old crew, see if they know anything. Could be awhile. Just leave me a plate in the warmer. I’ll get it when I come home.”

There’s a pause on the other end of the channel, and Bruce becomes instantly alert, because Alfred rarely pauses with that sort of weighty silence. “Master Bruce,” he says, a touch heavily. “It really would be best, sir, if you came home now. It seems… Miss Kent has arrived.”

Bruce freezes dead in his tracks, halfway through striding towards the Batmobile. Martha Kent, though she visits occasionally, isn’t expected to be back from her trip to Hawaii for another week, and besides, Alfred never calls her anything but “Mrs. Kent” or “madame”. And so far as he knows, Martha and Clark were the only Kents left. And if it isn’t Martha, that means it has to be… 

He ignores the tiny, dim, guttering pulse of hope, because that’s not what he does. It’s not who he is, even when he wants to be. 

“I’m calling it a night,” he says, sudden but decisive, and resumes his long-legged march to his vehicle. “I’ll be home in fifteen minutes. Try to keep her there. If it's an imposter, we’ll deal with it. If it really is her…” 

“I do not foresee her to be a flight risk, Master Bruce,” Alfred says, “as she is currently on her third plate of lasagna and has eaten an entire loaf of garlic bread. As carbohydrate-heavy as her meal is, I imagine even a Kryptonian will have trouble fleeing anywhere other than the chesterfield in the den for a post-dinner nap.”

“Just keep an eye on her. Don’t let her leave. Tie her up if you have to.” The dim, tiny, guttering pulse throbs just a little bit brighter, and Bruce grits his teeth as he throws the Batmobile into drive. Imposter. It has to be. People don’t come back from death, not even Kryptonians. Zod proved that. Until he didn’t. Except he was still dead. Only he wasn’t. 

Fury, frustration, impatience, anxiety, all those negative emotions Alfred keeps telling him to find a therapist for, churn around in his veins, make his teeth clench, weight his foot on the gas pedal of the car until it leaps forward. “Kryptonians,” he snarls.

“Quite, sir,” Alfred replies dryly, and Bruce starts to realize he’s still there. “Is there somewhere you’d prefer me to chain the poor girl? Your bed has sturdy posts, or perhaps I should drag her down to the cave for a more appropriate ambiance for your current mood?” 

His back teeth grind. “Alfred…”

Alfred keeps talking like Bruce never interrupted. “Dinner will be on the table when you arrive, sir. And worry not; I’m keeping a close eye on Miss Kent. I won’t let her wander far.” Just before the communications cuts from Alfred’s end, he hears Alfred mutter, “Certainly not if I expect grandchildren anytime soon.”

It’s a close call, but Bruce manages to resist the urge to slam his head into the steering wheel a few times. It isn’t even Clark, probably, can’t be, impossible to be.  And yet, there’s Alfred, already planning nurseries, despite Bruce’s many loudly and oft-repeated refutations that he has no intentions of needing one any time soon, if ever. 

“I need to get him a damn dog,” he mutters, and steers through the waterfall and into the cave behind.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not expect that kind of response. Wow, um... Thank you! :)
> 
> Here's chapter two. A couple of lines of dialogue in a scene lifted from BvS, used wholesale or modified slightly. You'll know it when you see it.
> 
> Please enjoy, comment, subscribe and rec, if you like it. :)

Alfred’s a good cook, and the lasagna is heavenly. Clark inhales four plates and an entire loaf of garlic bread before her hunger subsides, and she leans back with a soft sigh of contentment, feeling pleasantly full for the first time in a long time. “Thank you, Alfred,” she calls sincerely. “That was amazing.”

She stands and begins to gather the dishes she used, only to have them all but snatched out of her hands again. She blinks, because she hadn’t heard Alfred coming and that shouldn’t have happened at all. 

“You’re quite welcome, miss,” Alfred says with a dire look as he shifts the stack of dishes onto the nearby trolley. “I will remind you, however, that you are a guest here, and are neither required nor encouraged to do any of the cleaning up.”

Clark scratches the back of her neck, and grimaces. “My mother would have my head if I didn’t help out, Alfred,” she says. “She made special effort to teach me manners and how to be considerate of others. She’d have a few sharp words for you too, I’m sure, for preventing me.” 

“How fortunate for your head and my pride, then, your mother isn’t here to chastise us,” he says, and somehow makes the clatter of dishes underscore his otherwise mild tone to make it sound final and unassailable. “If you are still peckish, miss, I have a selection of cakes in the refrigerator. Might I interest you in a slice of double-layer fudge-frosted devil’s food cake?”

Thirty seconds ago, Clark would have sworn she was completely full, without any room for dessert. But the thought of cake, her guilty pleasure comfort food, is compelling enough that she suddenly finds she has room after all. “Yes please,” she says. 

\---

After two slices of cake and a cup of hot, sweet, dark coffee that Clark would swear had just been ground from beans picked minutes ago right off the plant, Clark is feeling warm and full and sleepy. She wakes up a little as Alfred is guiding her into the den, where a sinfully overstuffed couch sits in a predominant spot in the middle of the room.

She shivers a little as a breeze from somewhere, the vent in the corner maybe, hits her skin, and she hunches into her shoulders, rubbing her arms briskly. In the corner of her eye, she sees Alfred looking at her with unspoken concerns in his eyes and she smiles in what she hopes is a reassuring manner. 

“Are you cold, miss? Shall I fetch a blanket for you?”

“My energy reserves are too low,” she says by way of explanation. “I can’t regulate my body temperature as well as I usually can.” Her smile falls off, her breath hitches then. “Or did, I suppose. I’m sure I’ll be fine. No need to bother with a blanket, Alfred. It’s not that bad.”

Alfred eyes her, and Clark has the creepy-crawly sensation he’s assessing her the same way she assesses threats on a field of battle. “Miss Kent,” he says,  _ tsking  _ as he guides her, unresisting, around the coffee table and plumps the cushions on the left for her. “Once more, you are a guest, and your comfort is paramount.” He pauses, and then relents. “I’ll fetch you a sweater, at the very least. Help yourself to the remote control and sir’s neglected cable channels. I’ll only be a moment.”

Clark sinks onto the couch with a groaning sigh, because the couch is just as soft and fluffy as it looked from across the room. In short order, she is as comfortable as she’s probably ever going to be. She’s more than half dozing when Alfred lays a hand on her shoulder, jolting her up again. She blearily opens her eyes. His expression is apologetic. “Forgive me, miss, but you were shivering again. This should help.” 

She says  _ thank you  _ as he passes her something grey and soft, a cashmere sweater with a large, loose collar and thick hems. She wastes no time in pulling it on before settling back against the corner where the arm meets the back of the couch, folding her arms across her chest. There’s a scent to it, something faint and spicy, like aftershave daubed on sun-warmed skin. “S’nice,” she mumbles, buries her nose in the collar and drifts to sleep. 

**oOoOoOo**

Alfred finishes the dishes just as he hears the Batmobile’s distinct rumble in the distance. He dries his hands as the last of the sudsy water rinses down the drain, then runs the towel around sink to dry it as well. He uses the damp cloth to pull the last plate of lasagna from the warmer and carries it into the dining room. He sets it in Bruce’s customary spot, pours a glass of water and two fingers of scotch neat, and sets them both in front of the plate.

His timing, as always, is precise. He is just closing the closet where he stores the service trolley when the hidden door behind the grandfather clock in the hall opens, and Bruce strides out, cowl pushed back but otherwise still geared and kitted for his night job. Alfred arches an eyebrow, running a practiced, assessing look over him. Face like a thundercloud, stress lines and dark shadows around his eyes. No change there. He’s not moving the way he usually does to hide pain, he’s not favoring a side or a leg. Alfred is pleased; all in all, an uneventful night for the Batman. 

But since he knows his son so very, very well, he knows Bruce will ignore the place setting, will ignore the table, has nothing in mind but the young woman curled up on the couch in the den. Bruce likes to think his face is a closed book, unreadable and uncrackable, but Alfred knows Bruce better than anyone. 

Bruce will deny it to his dying breath, but Alfred can see the hope in Bruce, painted in tiny lines, a struggling gleam in his eyes, struggling and refusing to drown under the crushing weight of the pessimism and cynicism. It hurts something in Alfred’s heart, makes it twinge sharp and sudden, but it’s a good pain, because it means that Bruce is not the hollow, empty shell Alfred was afraid he was becoming. 

He steps into Bruce’s path when Bruce shows no sign of stopping, bringing Bruce up short. “Your room is the other way, Master Bruce,” he says, pleasant but firm. “I’ve laid out a change of clothing and refreshed your towels. Your dinner will keep until you’ve showered and changed, sir.”

Alfred finds it adorable that Bruce knows it will never work but still attempts to glower his way through. “That’s not important right now, Alfred,” he says. “It can wait. Where is she?”

“Miss Kent is asleep at the moment,” he replies, meeting Bruce’s continued glare with an unimpressed eyebrow. “She is likely to be for some time. Which should give you sufficient opportunity to clean up and eat while your dinner is still warm. Won’t that be a lovely and rare treat.”

Bruce seethes for a moment, and Alfred waits it out, quiet and patient. Finally, Bruce sighs and the tension slumps out of his shoulders. The anger and impatience drains too, and leaves him looking bone-tired and defeated. “Fine,” he snaps with no real heat. “I’ll do this your way.  _ After  _ I see her for myself.”

“Very good, sir,” Alfred says, pleased that Bruce capitulated so quickly. He had prepared for a lengthier argument. “Miss Kent is in the den.” He steps out of Bruce’s way, tucking his hands behind his back and turning to fall into step beside Bruce as he marches down the hall. He watches Bruce out of the corner of his eye, sees the muscles jumping in his jaw, and waits for the questions he knows are coming. 

But Bruce stays silent as he stops in the doorway of the den, leaning against the jamb and staring in for a long, long time. Alfred softens, watching the bob of Bruce’s throat as he swallows hard, the relief Bruce will deny he ever felt, the subtle sag against the side of the entry. “How sure,” he says, quiet and thick, glancing briefly to Alfred and then back into the room, “are you that it’s her? You never met her.”

“No sir,” Alfred agrees, shifts to stand just behind him and looks in on Clark himself. She’s still asleep, burrowed into Bruce’s sweater like it’s a security blanket, one hand tucked under her cheek against the couch’s arm, the other. clutching the neck of the sweater to her nose. “But I have met Martha Kent. And that,” he says with a nod towards the couch, “is definitely Martha Kent’s daughter.”

He reaches out and snags Bruce by the loose-hanging cowl as he begins to step forward into the room, gently but not-so-subtly pulling him back again. “Shower. Clean clothes. Food. In that order, sir.  _ Then  _ Miss Kent.”

Bruce growls in irritation, bats his cowl away from Alfred’s light grasp. “What are you doing?”

“Reminding you that, as much as you enjoy pretending otherwise, you are not a beast, and also that you rather smell like the sewers, sir. Hardly a fitting appearance for a young man to take in the company of a young woman.”

That draws a snort from Bruce, pulls an amused smirk up from wherever he keeps them under lock and key. “Neither of us are young, Alfred.”

“I’ve changed your diapers, sir,” Alfred replies blandly, enjoys Bruce’s embarrassed grimace as he always does. “You will always be a young man to me.”  Judging Bruce has had enough time to decide to do as he’s told under his own power, he reaches out to grasp him by the shoulder, turning him away from the den and not-so-subtly nudging him down the hall. “You may return to your pining from afar after dinner.”

**oOoOoOo**

As aggravating as Alfred is, Bruce has to admit he’s feeling a thousand percent better after a hot shower, clean clothes, and Alfred’s home cooking. He feels less edgy, less like there’s something trying to crawl from under his skin. He lingers over his water, head propped on a fist, watching Alfred clear the table for him. (He’s long since learned Alfred disapproves when he tries to help. He’s given up trying.)

“Can I talk now?” he asks, draining his water and setting the glass on the table, for it to be whisked away immediately. He briefly wishes it were another scotch, but Alfred declined to pour him another, and refuses to tell him where the bottle is hidden. 

“You can always talk, sir,” Alfred responds, setting the dirty dishes on his cart. Before he starts wiping the table down, he snaps the dishtowel at Bruce’s arm. “Elbows off. I just may not always respond if I feel you should be doing something more important, like eating or sleeping.”

Bruce smiles as the cloth flicks against his shirt. Instead of face Alfred’s continuing wrath, he stands completely, pushing the chair back against the table. Now that he’s allowed to use his tablet, he runs a quick search for any oddities in Smallville news, any sightings of the Superwoman, anything out of the ordinary that might be even remotely associated with Clark rising from the grave. 

His protocols are very, very thorough, but they don’t turn up anything. Not even a police report for a grave disturbance.

He rubs his forehead, swipes down his face and sets his chin on his hand as he stares at the tablet, moving from window to window with flicks of his thumb. “There’s nothing,” he says after a while, after the cleaning-up noises have ceased. “Not even from Smallville. Not a sighting, not a police report. Nothing.”

“The internet does not always hold the answer, Master Bruce,” Alfred says gently, and a platter rattles softly against the table, followed shortly by the sound and smell of coffee being poured. “Perhaps you should make your inquiries to Miss Kent.”

Bruce smirks, sets the tablet aside, turns around. “I tried to do that earlier, but she had a guard dog I couldn’t get past.” He reaches past Alfred to grab his cup, and yanks his hand back when Alfred smacks it with a spoon. “Like my coffee, apparently.”

Alfred doesn’t look up from his arrangement of coffee supplies on the tray. “Earlier, you wouldn’t have asked her anything. You’d have snarled and yelled and stomped and been a general ogre. I judged Miss Kent to have been through enough for the day without dealing with your more charming personality quirks.”

“I love you too, Alfred.” He’s silent for a moment, thoughtful. “How bad is she?”

Alfred does glance up at that, and just for a moment, concern flashes across his face. “Holding together, but not as strongly as she’s pretending,” he says quietly. “She fell out of the sky, through the skylight in the library and nearly landed on top of me. She didn’t know how she’d gotten here. She’s hiding her confusion well, all things considered, but if you ask me, sir, she’s still deep in shock.”

“If she had to dig herself out of a grave, I can’t blame her.” Bruce sighs, soft but deep, scrubs at his face again. “I should go to Smallville and investigate.”

“Or,” Alfred says, picking up the tray and pinning Bruce with a significantly disapproving look, “you could call Master Dick and ask him to go in your stead.”

It’s exactly what Bruce wants to do, but it comes with its own set of problems. Not the least of which is the fact that… “Dick’s still not talking to me. He didn’t just move out of the mansion, he moved out of the city. I thought that was clear enough.”

All Alfred does is stare, neutrally, at Bruce for a long moment. “He moved to Bludhaven when he required space, though I doubt he’d have gone that far had the house next door been available. There are times I despair of your interpersonal observational skills.” He shakes his head faintly, then turns and starts moving towards the hall. “Come along, Master Bruce, and we’ll see if Miss Kent is feeling more restored.”

**oOoOoOo**

“Clark! Clark?”

Lois’s hands are on her face, her lips soft and wet. Clark coughs, spits up blood and wipes her mouth with the back of her hands. In the distance, the Batman and the woman who’d saved both their butts are fighting the monster. It’s growing, changing, evolving, and Clark can feel the pressure of it building power for another blast, a jarring buzz like electricity playing across her skin.

She looks at Lois, and Lois looks back at her. Lois is pale, shocky, shaking with her near-death experience. And Clark drinks in the sight of her face, because she’s never been more beautiful. “I love you,” she says, and has probably never meant it more than she does in this exact moment. 

Lois astonishingly goes paler. “No,” she whispers. “No, Clark. Don’t. You can’t.”

And Clark offers her a sad smile. “This is my world.  _ You  _ are my world.”

And Lois is screaming behind her, and the kryptonite is searing into her eyes, her lungs, her brain, stealing her strength. But she is the Woman of Steel, and that name has a meaning to her. She will not break before she is ready to be broken. She will not fall until the creature, this Doomsday, is choking on its last breath. 

The Batman and the woman are blips on her radar, her failing vision narrowed down to a tunnel, through which the monster stands at the other end, surrounded by spotty grey and deep, void black. And she’s at the beast, the spear is through the beast, and it screams, deep and primal and fatal, and its last act of defiance is to trap her in a massive paw, shake her like a rag doll until her teeth rattle and she spits blood again. 

The world is smoke and ash, cloying and choking. The world is pain, sharp and fierce and immediate, which fades into numbness. The world flashes bright and hot, and she thinks the raw, torn screaming she can hear is coming from her own throat as the beast explodes. 

And then the world is black and dark, an empty, cold place where she is trapped, howling and crying and shrieking. 

And then the world is nothing at all, until she’s drowning in dirt and rock and punching her way through the earth.

\----

“—rk? Clark.  _ Clark.” _

She regains awareness abruptly, and finds herself cold and trembling, pressed against a warm, tall body, hunched into a broad chest like she’s seeking heat or comfort or protection, her hand fisted in soft material. Her eyes are burning and her cheeks are wet, breath hitching in near-silent sobs, and her vision swims, spotty and wavering. 

A sigh resonates under her cheek, and arms close around her shoulders, awkward but gentle. “It’s okay, Clark,” a familiar voice says. “Just breathe. You’re okay.”

There’s a heartbeat in her ears, a flutter of pulse against the bridge of her nose where it’s pressed against the underside of a jaw, a little fast, but steady, and she squeezes her eyes shut, tries to focus on its rhythm. Somewhere a little more than halfway to reining in the wild panic, she remembers where she is and, as the aftershave-sun-skin scent penetrates to her brain, it dawns on her that she’s all but crawled into Bruce’s lap and is huddled against him like a child frightened of a storm. 

“Sorry,” she whispers, when she’s got enough decorum back to be thoroughly embarrassed, but still can’t bring herself to move quite yet. 

Incredibly, all he does is lean his cheek against the top of her head. “Take your time,” he says with a faint sigh that somehow manages to sound neither annoyed or put-upon. “It’s fine. I don’t mind.”

_ You do,  _ she wants to say, because she can feel it, from the tension in his chest, to the awkward hang of his arms around her back, to the fact that his pulse keeps jumping and throat keeps working. He’s uncomfortable and she’s in his space, and she should really move, but she’s also edgy and shaking and in desperate need of the reassurance he says he doesn’t mind giving. 

So she stays in his lap until her breathing is even, until her head is clear. She feels colder when she finally slides back onto the couch, away from his warmth, back into her corner. She compensates by taking a deep, fortifying breath and accepting the cup of coffee Alfred has magically appeared to place directly in her hand.

For a moment, she can’t meet Bruce’s eyes, is too mortified to even glance in his direction. So she busies herself with scooping a couple of biscuits off the plate Alfred lays on the coffee table. She’s not supposed to lose control like that, because people get hurt if she does. People die. 

Finally, she chances a peek, finds him eying her thoughtfully over the rim of his coffee cup. Her first instinct is to duck her head again, but she has never shied away from a challenge in her life, and she’s not going to start now. She meets his gaze with what she hopes is something approaching calm and even, but isn’t sure how successful she’s being. “Thank you,” she says, and readjusts herself on the couch until she’s sitting with her feet tucked under her. 

“Least I could do.” For some reason, he looks a little startled those words came out of his mouth, but Clark doesn’t say anything as he leans forward, elbows on his knees, and wipes both hands down his lower face. 

“You look tired.” She didn’t mean to say it, but it’s out and in the air before it really registers. It’s not less true because it was unintentional, though; he’s … well, not  _ haggard,  _ not  _ defeated,  _ but something in that ballpark. More lines around his eyes. More shadows  _ in  _ his eyes. A tension in his shoulders and expression that she noticed before, at Luthor’s party, during their fight, ratcheted up a couple of notches. 

“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” he says, offers her the ghost of a smile that tries to be real and only partly manages it. “It’s been rougher in the last few months since you…fought Doomsday.”

She closes her eyes for a moment, sips her coffee for strength, and then opens them again. “Since I died, you mean.”

He flinches, and things flicker across his face, a parade of things like guilt and despair and grief and loss, and it floors her, because they hadn’t known each other well. At all, hardly. And those are all emotions she associates with losing a loved one. He clears his throat, tosses his coffee back and sets the cup down on the table as he swallows. “Yes. Since you died. Things… changed, that night. Not all of it was for the better.”

Clark isn’t sure what to say to that, so she just stares at the empty cup in her hand for a minute before she sets it aside and rubs her palms over her knees. “How am I alive, Bruce?” 

“I don’t know,” Bruce replies, and leans forward to cover her hands with his. Startled, she meets his eyes, and there’s nothing but determination and relief. “But I’m going to try and find out. What do you remember?”

“The beast. The spear. Then nothing.” She shivers uneasily, hunches into her borrowed sweater. “Nothing until I woke up in a coffin.”

He swears, soft and vicious, but offers her a tired, tight smile when she glances at him, startled. “I did that once,” he says. “It’s not fun.”

She’s not sure if he’s conscious he’s doing it or not, but his thumbs are rubbing soothingly against her wrists. She doesn’t bring his attention to it, because she doesn’t want it to stop. “You have a very strange and frightening life,” she says instead and is delighted when his response is a sideways smile, a smirk with no true bite, just dark humor.

“That may be the most extremely understated way of putting it I’ve ever heard,” he says, thumbs still doing that smooth sweep over her skin. “Have you spoken to anyone? Lois, your mother? A neighbour?”

She shakes her head. “No. I was care—” Her voice cracks, and she swallows hard. “I was careful, I think. There are a few craters, I’m sure, but I tried to come down where they wouldn’t be noticed. Mom… the house… God, it was so empty. I don’t know where she is, but she hasn’t been home in awhile. And I … don’t even know what...I’d say to Lois. What would I say? What would I say? Sorry I’ve been dead for four months? Sorry you had to go through all that? I love you, and I hope you didn’t sleep with anyone while I was gone? What would I possibly say?”

She yanks her hands out from under his, pressing their heels against her eyes and rubbing hard, trying to stop the burn of fast, hot tears in her eyes. But it’s already too late for that, because she’s half-hysterical again, despises herself for it, can’t stop the panic from rising. “I should have stayed dead,” she sobs. 

“Jesus, Clark. Come here.” There’s nothing but a world of soft compassion in that tone, and he pulls her gently by the shoulders back into his lap, tucked under his chin and engulfed in a very warm, more confident embrace. “Your mother will be glad you’re alive,” he murmurs into her hair. “So will Lois. So am I. Martha is in Hawaii right now. She needed a vacation, so she went. Do you want me to call her?”

“Yes,” Clark whispers, because she’s tired and she’s scared and she’s hurt and she wants her mother. “But don’t. Not yet. I’m not… I don’t…”

“Okay. Do you want me to call Lois?”

“No.” Because the last thing she did to Lois was die in front of her. Lois deserves better. She swallows hard, squeezes her eyes closed, tries to summon a better memory of Lois, the bathtub, or the flush of passion in her cheeks, or the absolute faith shining in her eyes, but all she can see is Lois’s face in the moments before she flew off with the spear. “Not yet.”

“Okay. What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” she says, turns her face into his neck, and just breathes. “This. This is… This is nice, right now.”

“Okay,” he says softly, and settles back against the cushions. “I’m not good at this,” he says, soft and gruff. “Just so you know.”

His heartbeat is soothing, rhythmic, and Clark closes her eyes, breathes slow and deep, feels herself calming bit by bit, the dreadful shivering cold leaching away. “You’re better than you think,” she mumbles. “I’m sorry.”

“You shouldn’t be.” A moment of silence, and his hand strokes up her spine, then back down. “Why’d you come here?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t mean to. I can’t remember getting here. I was home, and I remembered… the beast, and then I was screaming, and then I was here, and I…” She trails off, fading into silence. “Maybe I thought it was safe. I don’t know.”

Bruce draws in a breath, sharp and fast, then lets it out again, more slowly. “It is safe here,” he says, firm and sure. “ _ You’re  _ safe here. It’s fine, Clark. You’re welcome here. For as long as you need.”

“Thank you,” she says softly. Neither of them speak again, or move, until Alfred politely clears his throat and inquires if Miss Kent will be requiring a room and a fresh change of clothing, because he’s made up the bed in the guest suite for whenever she is ready to retire for the night. 


	3. Chapter 3

Clark doesn’t sleep. 

She doesn’t technically need to, because the sun has always given her the energy she needs to restore her mind and heal her body, but she’s always enjoyed the act of sleep, waking feeling refreshed, or grumbly, or aroused. She’s learned the tricks of making sleep a conscious choice on the sunniest days when she’s invigorated and bursting with life. Learned how to calm her thoughts and smooth her breathing and let herself relax muscle by muscle until she’s boneless and comfortable, to drift in a restful, pleasant peace until she opens her eyes again. 

She likes falling asleep beside someone. She likes luxuriating in clean sheets that smell like the wind and the sunshine. She likes the  _ human  _ aspect of sleep. And she likes dreams. Or at least she did, before Doomsday. 

But Clark doesn’t sleep. She tries, over and over again, lays in the darkened room Alfred prepared for her, knowing the mattress is soft and luxuriant, knowing the thread count of the sheets is obnoxiously high, knowing that she’s  _ safe…  _

But all she does is lie there under the covers, tense and tight and tired, staring at the ceiling until what passes for dawn breaks through her window. 

She eats breakfast with Alfred and Bruce, laughs and talks like she’s not hollowing out inside, but she knows they can tell something’s wrong. And she wants to tell them, she wants to confess the horrible exhaustion leeching her strength, stealing her motivation, taking everything she is and making it empty and cold. But even that takes energy she doesn’t have. She thinks they get it anyway, because Alfred brings her more coffee and a sinfully sweet caramel danish still warm from the oven, and Bruce’s eyes are understanding over the rim of his coffee cup.

Their empathy might hurt worse than the kryptonite did. 

She flees after breakfast, driven by some nameless thing that curls and roils in her chest like a shadow, clawing at her throat and making her heart race. She’s breathing hard, teeters on the verge of panic, and runs until she’s at the woods on the border of property, crouched in front of an old tree trunk with her face buried in her knees and her arms over her head. 

Alfred eventually finds her there, huddled in the wind and rain, soaked to the skin and trying to remember how she lost so much time. And that thought tries to pull a bitter laugh out of her, because she's lost too much time, four months in the ground, but her face is stone and her body is numb. He runs her a bath, strips her efficiently and gets her into the water. Clark's not sure, but she thinks he did it with his eyes closed the entire time. 

By the time the scalding water has gone tepid, Clark has regained some sense of herself. Her memories are jagged and painful, so sharp they threaten to gouge mortal wounds if she lingers on them too long, but her head feels clearer. Clear enough to flush with embarrassment at her behaviour, even though she knows she should have nothing to be embarrassed about.

A fresh set of clothes waits for her on the edge of the vanity when she climbs out of the deep claw-foot tub and dries off. Alfred must have been in at some point, though she can't recall when. The clothing is new, she can tell. The tags have been removed, but when she runs her hand over the soft material of the button-down shirt and the denim of the jeans, it's got that feeling she associates with  _ never worn. _ But both the shirt and the jeans slide on comfortably and fit like they've been worn for years. Despite herself, Clark's impressed with the luxurious quality money can buy. 

It also occurs to her that, unlike her borrowed sweater from yesterday, these are definitely not Bruce's clothes, and that means Alfred must have gone shopping for her.

She doesn't know whether to feel grateful or anxious about that. After a long, long moment of staring at herself in the mirror, eyes huge and shocky, suntan faded to near-translucence, she decides gratitude is probably the best route to go. The decision doesn’t stop the anxiety, but it does make her feel a little more in control of herself. 

**oOoOoOo**

Bruce doesn’t know how to help Clark. 

It’s been three days, and every day, she grows a little more distant, a little more turned inwards. She roams the ground restlessly, for hours at time, and Bruce keeps an eye on her through his security monitors as he works on the chemical analysis of the unknown drug he pulled off the dealer. He feels faintly guilty he’s doing so, but shunts aside his niggling conscience with the ease of long practice. He still doesn’t know it’s definitely Clark, he tells himself, but that excuse is getting thinner and thinner, because it  _ is _ Clark. He just doesn’t know how. 

Occasionally, he notices her stopping for a time, never in a place he can find a pattern for, and she looks like she’s straining to do something, her entire body whipcord tight, fisted hands trembling at her sides. Other times, she concentrates, squinting and frowning with effort. It takes him an embarrassingly long time to puzzle out that she’s trying to fly, trying to use her heat vision, and failing. 

Clark may be Clark, he thinks, and it’s a harsh thought. But Clark isn’t Superwoman anymore.

He sighs, and turns his chair to an unused monitor to pull up his video messaging. Down here in the Cave, there are precious few numbers permitted on that account. He hovers over Dick’s icon for a long moment, then sighs again and starts the call. 

He already knows he’s going to regret this, but that’s never been a deterrent. No reason to let it stop him now.

To his mild surprise, Dick picks up almost right away, and Bruce never will admit (but probably should) the relief that flushes through him at that. Dick is scowling, unimpressed and looks unhappy to see him, but really, that’s normal. 

He raised Dick, after all. No surprise Dick picked up his mannerisms.

But then Dick’s face cracks in the sly smirk that’s purely his, and Bruce breathes an inaudible sigh. Not so far damaged, then. “Bruce,” he says. “You look like a man who needs a favor.”

He feels his own mouth curve up on one side, wry and faint. “I could be calling to see how university is going.”

“But you’re not,” Dick replies, and leans back in his chair, tucks his arms behind his head. “If I thought you were, I’d already be asking for your passphrase. What do you need?”

“Couple of things.” Bruce taps a key and the screen displays an upload progress bar. “It might not have hit Bludhaven yet, but this is a chemical breakdown of an unknown drug I found on a lowlife dealer a few nights back. I suspect Scarecrow has a hand in it.”

Dick frowns and leans forward, and there’s a faint sound of chair legs hitting the floor as he comes in. “Okay,” he says slowly, eyeing the side of his screen. “Jesus, that looks nasty. I don’t even recognize half of these compounds.”

“I don’t either, so don’t feel too bad about it. I’m still running tests.” Bruce registers the surprise on Dick’s face and smirks, but doesn’t give him a chance to speak. “There’s a similar drug undergoing mouse trials currently in Metropolis, intended to treat patients with extreme phobias. The study’s being run by a Doctor Carla Fern. I’m hacking into the lab’s servers now to pull the data files.”

“I’ll keep my eyes open. The last thing Bludhaven needs is this thing hitting our streets.” Dick asks, eyes flicking back to the camera. “You need me to go to Metropolis?”

Bruce hesitates, knows Dick noticed, shakes his head. “No. That’s the other thing I called you about. I need you to go to Smallville.”

Dick blinks and just for a second, surprise paints itself over his face. “Smallville? Isn’t that where..?”

“Yes,” Bruce says shortly. 

Dick blinks again. “Why?”

“Call it a hunch.”

Dick’s eyes narrow. “Is this the kind of hunch where you know exactly what I should be looking for, but you don’t want to tell me because you don’t want to bias my opinion, or whatever other bullshit reasons you use for keeping me in the dark?” 

Bruce doesn’t answer right away, but Dick apparently takes that as answer enough. He snorts and his face goes sullen and guarded again. “This is exactly why I left Gotham, Bruce. If you can’t trust me after all this time…”

“If I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t be calling you right now,” he says, and if he’s snappish, it’s only because this is an old, tired, familiar argument. “I’d just go myself. I’m asking for your help here, Dick. What more do you want?”

“I don’t know, Bruce. What else do you have to give?” Dick shakes his head, mouth set in a tight line. “Fine,” he says shortly. “I’ll go to Smallville in the morning, and I’ll be in touch with you from there. I gotta go. Class in an hour.”

The feed cuts before Bruce can do more than open his mouth to reply, and he sighs tiredly. Well. He knew he’d regret calling Dick. Nice to know he can still predict the outcome of conversations with his kid brother. At least he still has that. 

He turns back to the monitors, and it takes him a second to locate Clark on them. She’s sitting on a stone bench in the overgrown rose garden, chin on one knee, staring at the bushes that have grown wild and feral. As he watches, she slides off the bench, moves to the nearest bed and crouches down to start weeding. 

There’s a faint surge of anger at the sight of someone being where his mother used to spend her time gardening, enjoying the sunshine and teaching him about the language of flowers. But it’s an old ghost, a useless lingering feeling, and Bruce knows as clearly as he knows his own name that Martha Wayne would not have begrudged Clark pulling a few dandelions and nettles out of the dirt. 

She’d probably be more disappointed that Bruce had let her cherished gardens languish unmaintained for so long, in all honesty. 

He watches her for another minute, as she methodically moves down the bed inch by inch, leaving the weeds piled in neat bundles behind her, and reaches a decision he didn’t even know he was making. 

But that’s really the story of his entire relationship with Clark to this point, isn’t it? He shakes his head, takes a few minutes to change the lab’s settings from manual to automated, and shuts off the lights as he moves back upstairs. 

**oOoOoOo**

If there’s one thing Clark learned from her mother, it’s how to channel negative emotions into productive work, and it soothes the practical farmgirl buried in the core of her identity to do something  _ useful  _ while her mind is roiling and churning beneath an outwardly calm mask.

It’s too late in the season to do more than weed the beds, but someone left these gorgeous bushes — old garden Damasks, if she had to guess, though her knowledge is limited to second-hand information gleaned from her mother’s love of them; this place must be _riotous_ with color in the spring and summer — to grow wild and unchecked, and she’s surprised more bushes aren’t dead from the number of weeds choking them out. 

It’s habit that makes her stack the weeds as she goes. She doubts Wayne Manor has a mulch bin, not if the gardens are in the sorry shape they are, but … She doesn’t let herself consider starting one. That’s something someone with long-term plans would do. She doesn’t have long-term plans. She doesn’t even have any short-term plans. 

She loses track of time, but it’s okay because she’s peripherally aware of it passing this time. Working with her hands has always been meditative to her, calming and centering. It doesn’t even matter that it's not familiar dirt; she can feel the difference in the texture and density of the soil, the dampness and sticky qualities unlike the dirt back home, but not enough to be jarring. Muscle memory fills in the rest.

She doesn't know how long she works her way down the bushes, shaking unwanted roots out of the dirt and laying them behind her for mulching, but when she looks up from her earth-caked hands, Bruce is sitting on the bench she abandoned, hands in the pockets of a long black wool jacket and cheeks reddened from the chilly breeze. 

She freezes, feeling strangely like he just caught the doing something private or embarrassing, and swallows hard. And his expression is no help. He's long been a master of controlling his facial twitches and tics, schooling them into an impassive mask a psychic would find uncrackable. 

But it cracks all on its own when he notices he watching him, a slow, dawning smile that's barely there but seems a thousand times more real than the smiles she's seen on his photos in the paper. 

“Been there long?” she asks with a faint smile of her own, stands and dusts her hands together, trying to knock the dirt free. 

“Not really.” There's a rattle of plastic as he pulls a hand it of his pocket, and holds out a package of wet wipes to her. “I just didn't want to interrupt. You seemed pretty focused on what you were doing.”

She takes the wipes gratefully and starts cleaning her hands, folding the soiled wipes for disposal when she returns to the house. With a wry smirk, he pulls the other hand out and offers her a plastic bag. “You always think of everything?” she says as she takes that too. 

“Better to be prepared,” he replies. “The job requires preparation and contingency plans. My life could depend on it some night.”

“I guess I can understand that,” she says, and examines her nails to make sure she got as much dirt out from under them as is possible without soap and hot water. 

He stands, and both hands are back in his pockets. “Can you? You’re the strongest person on Earth. There can’t be much that can challenge you on a daily basis.”

She’s not sure, but she thinks there’s a teasing note buried in the neutral tones of his voice. She smiles and shrugs as she bags the dirty wipes and tucks them into her pocket. “Strongest person on Earth or not, Bruce, I was still a Girl Scout,” she says, “and beyond that, I’m from Kansas. We’re a practical people.”

His smile widens. “I think that’s part of why Alfred likes you so much,” he says. “Your practicality.”

She blushed furiously and ducks her head, covering it less than smoothly at the last minute by lifting her foot to knock the accumulated dirt off the top of her shoe. “I also think it has something to do with destroying that suit of armor.”

“He always did hate polishing it,” Bruce agrees, and his eyes slide past her. “The rose bushes look a lot better. I think my mother would be happy someone cared enough to finally weed them.”

Clark goes still, feels the blood drain from her face. “I didn't know they were your mother's,” she says. “I'm sorry. I won't touch them again.”

He's not angry, or grouchy, or any of the other things she thought he might be. Instead, he's amused. “Why? They were Mom's pride and joy, and I've neglected them for years. If taking care of them, which they are desperately in need of, I might add, helps you at all, then I think Mom would tell you to go ahead and take care of them.”

Clark doesn’t know what she should say to that, and spends a long few moments flailing for an answer that doesn’t come. “I looked up Lois online today.” It comes out of her in a rush, a thing she blurts that she didn’t mean to say at all. She stares at her hands for a moment, slowly curls them into fists, then relaxes them and looks up at Bruce. “Read through her Facebook. Did you know she was dating again?”

His eyes don’t leave her, and she doesn’t see any surprise in them, but she also doesn’t see any dissembling in them either when he says, “I didn’t, no.” A pause, a slight hesitation, and he pulls his hands out of his pockets to hold them towards Clark. “I’m so sorry, Clark.”

She knows he probably means to lay his hands on her shoulders, the reassuring arms-length bicep rub or shoulder-squeeze, but her instincts are ingrained from a lifetime as Martha Kent’s daughter, and she’s sliding into a hug before it occurs to her it might not be what he was offering. But his arms close readily enough around her back, and it feels warm and reassuring and it is exactly what she needs. 

She sighs, deep and heavy, and it shudders through her whole body. She turns her face into his neck, forehead against the underside of his jaw. “I know it’s been four months,” she says in an undertone, “and I’m glad she’s moving on. I am. I really am, Bruce. And if this Haley Jordan will treat her right, will love her like she deserves to be loved... “ She trails off, swallows hard, and her eyes burn with sudden tears. “But it was yesterday for me.”

“I know,” he murmurs into her hair, and if she didn’t know better, she would swear he kisses her temple while he’s there. “I think Alfred would say that it’s okay to not be okay.”

She sniffs, huffs a soft, short  _ ha.  _ “Alfred would,” she says. “Not you, though?”

“I dress like a bat and sleep as little as possible. I wouldn’t know a healthy way to deal with not being okay if it bit me on the ass. I told you,” and his voice quiets a little, “I’m not good at this.”

“And I told you,” she says just as quietly, “you’re better than you think. You really don’t mind if I sometimes come out to the garden to putter?”

“I really don’t.” He pulls away then and  _ does  _ hold her at arm’s length, smiling at her in a way that should make her nervous, but only triggers a responding, slow grin. “In fact, let me show you something.” He lets go of her shoulders, but one hand stays outstretched. After a moment, she takes his hand and his fingers link through hers. 

He leads her by the hand through the hedges and bushes, around the corner of a particularly tall, unkempt bush, and back towards the house. Instead of moving to the side entrance or taking the footpath back around to the front, he turns the other way, onto a path that’s barely visible through the grass. She has no idea where he’s taking her; she stays away from this side of the property on her walks, choosing a location that’s further away from the house in case her abilities are no longer in her control when she finally manages to activate them. 

But Bruce’s pace is confident, and Clark’s got a long enough stride to keep up with him. He takes her around a copse of trees and slows to a halt in front of an outbuilding she hadn’t even known was there. A greenhouse, easily six feet long and wide enough to accommodate two school buses parked side by side, with a huge arched frame and glass panels curving over the steel and PVC piping. 

“This was Mom’s too,” Bruce says. “She had Dad build it a couple of weeks before they died. I don’t know what she intended to put into it, but Alfred uses part of it for his hothouse flowers and his bell peppers and tomatoes. If you think it would help, Clark, you should take the other half and do what you like in there, for as long as you want.”

Overwhelmed, she’s turning back into him, stepping into an embrace that’s becoming as automatic as it’s becoming comfortable, before she does much more than blink in response. “I don’t know what to say,” she whispers, closes her eyes and swallows down the lump. “Thank you.”

“Whatever you need, Clark,” he murmurs back, and there’s something… something deep and significant in his tone, a bare hint of something complex that she should probably examine, but it’s a passing instinct that washes away in the warmth of his hug. “You just let me know.”

**oOoOoOo**

He leaves her with seed catalogues and his credit card, and spends the rest of the afternoon down in the Cave, overseeing the analyses that are only now starting to finish and trying to figure out when his world started feeling slightly askew. 

The moment Alfred called him to tell him Clark had returned from the grave is the most likely answer, but Bruce has the nagging feeling that it’s deeper than that. He’s too goddamn old to have a crush, too goddamn old feel like an awkward fumbling teenager. But that’s exactly what he has and, every time Clark steps into his personal space, that’s exactly what he becomes.

It’s wildly inappropriate, he tells himself, staring fruitlessly at his monitors and the nigh-incomprehensible strings of information they display. Not only is she technically coming from a very recent breakup, she’s also been dead for four months and her healing from that has to be a priority. 

He stands abruptly from his monitors and moves to the stairs leading down towards the Armory, scowling and frustrated with himself.  _ Alfred was right,  _ he thinks sourly, running his hands through his hair which is, he’s positive, already disarrayed by hours of the same nervous habit.  _ I do pine from afar.  _ It’s a depressing thought. 

The lowlifes will be the ones to suffer the consequences of him leaving the manor in a mood like this one. Bruce has always been less than concerned with the emotional well-being of the criminals he leaves for the cops. It’ll be nice and cathartic for him, though, and that’s the only thing he cares about right now.

\----

He returns to the Manor at two in the morning, satisfied with his work for the night. Three robberies, a mugging in an alleyway and finding three of Crane’s old compatriots, but the irritation at the things he didn’t accomplish outweigh the things he did. As hard as he searched, there are no new leads available, and the dealers he knocked on their asses tonight didn’t know much of anything except rumors and second-, third- and tenth-hand information. 

He has a name now, though: Deimos. He doesn’t even need to look that one up. One of a pair of twins born to Ares and Aphrodite, a personification of the terror of loss. Child of Ares, Greek god of war. 

He strips and showers in the Cave, letting the water hammer down on tight shoulders now likely also bruised from an over-enthusiastic girlfriend when he cuffed her dealer-slash-boyfriend to a pipe for the cops to pick up at their convenience. And he practically groans in relief as he realizes he can choose his comfortable sweats and hoodie instead of the usual three-piece business suit, because he, miracle of miracles, has gotten back in time to actually get a few hours of semi-decent sleep tonight. 

Alfred is waiting in the hall when he slips out from behind the grandfather clock, looking as bright-eyed and refreshed as he did at six o’clock the previous morning when Bruce had his first cup of coffee for the day. “Good evening, sir. I trust the criminal element wasn’t overly taxing tonight?”

“Not moreso than usual.” He takes the bottle of water Alfred extends to him, unscrews the cap and guzzles half the bottle down. “Any particular reason you’re ambushing me at this hour, Alfred?”

Alfred smiles ever-so-faintly at him, tucks his hands behind his back in his version of parade rest. “I’m a little concerned about Miss Kent, Master Bruce,” he says. “I don’t believe she’s slept since her first day here, when she napped on the couch. While I’m certain sunlight makes up for a lot with her particular biology, she hasn’t been getting much of it.”

Bruce frowns, sips the water, and eyes Alfred, because he’s got the sneaking suspicion there are ulterior motives behind it. “You clearly have an idea as to what I should do about it,” he mutters. “So let’s hear it.”

Alfred all but beams, as much as he is capable of expressing with his eyebrows, anyway. “Take her to bed, sir.”

Bruce chokes on his water and spends the next minute sputtering and spitting. "Alfred," he says, hoarse and warning, gives him a gimlet eye as he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.    
  
"To sleep, sir. And she  _ would _ sleep," Alfred says gently, whipping a cloth out of his back pocket and bending to clean up the water on the floor. "As would you, I think. I looked in on her while she was lying down earlier. She struggled to stay asleep, and even when she managed it for a few minutes, she kept reaching out to the place beside her. Looking for someone would be my guess.”

Bruce takes another minute for composure's sake, and sighs. “I can't even begin to list all the reasons that's not an option, Alfred.”

“At least see what she thinks of it, sir,” is Alfred's serene reply. “As I have come to learn from your frequent bouts of restlessness, there is little an insomniac won't at least consider for one good night's rest.”

\----

He doesn't broach it, but he does end up sitting on the couch for the first time in forever, watching a movie he has no interest in, because Clark asks him to. And he realizes when she smiles warmly under hollow cheeks and exhaustion-bruised eyes, that he’s in deep, dark trouble, because he has a thousand things to do but he sits anyway. 

She’s sound asleep fifteen minutes in, her head pillowed on his shoulder, his arm around her shoulders. He gives it a minute, then carefully reaches out to take the remote out of her slack hand and turns the TV off, plunging the room into darkness. 

He should move her to her own room, but he has a feeling that isn’t going to work as well as he might otherwise hope it would. He sighs faintly, because he knows then that part of that deep, dark trouble means that he’s not moving until she wakes up. 

He stirs slightly when Alfred comes with a warm afghan, but when it’s tucked around them, he lets it lull him back into dozing. If he dreams, he doesn’t remember it, but the more important thing is, if Clark dreams, it’s not about Doomsday, because she stays sound asleep until the morning. 

**Author's Note:**

> I am on tumblr [@allthemarvelousrage](http://allthemarvelousrage.tumblr.com/)


End file.
